Water From Your Eyes — Everyone’s Crushed
The incredible album after the breakout of Structure is here
It has to be exhausting to be touring as an emerging band now. Album sales have dwindled to purists as streaming has taken over, Ticketmaster has essentially destroyed access for many, and there is an ongoing fight with venues over merch cuts. It seems as though it is becoming more difficult for those creating a product to receive compensation for the product they created. But, this is capitalism. It cannot exist without efficiency and exploitation. It cannot function without the crushing weight of impending loss of hope and dreams.
For over a year now, Water From Your Eyes has existed on the road in the midst of all of this. Twice they have headlined in Minnesota (7th Street Entry and Turf Club), and have also supported Spoon and Interpol. It seems there is no end in sight for the touring machine. Which makes it all the more incredible that the Brooklyn duo have managed to make their best album and statement yet.
Everyone’s Crushed follows up the fantastic breakout album Structure, and while the album opens with a song of the same name, little is the same from there. There is more urgency, efficiency, refinement, and vulnerability. It feels exactly as its title suggests, a band being crushed under a hydraulic press as the world also is. It is life condensed down to efficiency, starting with the simple innocence of “Structure”. As if forming, it sounds like a system starting up with sporadic blips and beeps as it begins the press of life. “Barley” then starts the lowering of the metal ram. It begins with a party because there is no reason to worry yet. The lightness of the beginning can only last so long, though, as mistakes are shared in “Open”, a cacophonous afterhours gone slightly awry. Experience the crush of opposites and loneliness in “Everyones Crushed” (I’m with everyone I love and everything hurts… I’m with everything I hurt and everything’s love), and become truly jaded in “True Life”, as we are smashed entirely flat by the press. The remainder of the album feels like the respite of realization and the slow unfurling of remaining pieces. Like lungs smashed down, then able to lightly gasp again. Accepting what has been done and where to go from here.
While the album is incredibly referential, it is also entirely their own. “Open” bursts with a moment that peaks at the sky, with notes reminiscent of “What Would I Want Sky?” By Animal Collective, only to darken immediately back to the horrors of life. “Everyone’s Crushed” has a guitar that chugs like Menneskekollektivet by Lost Girls, or something close enough anyway, and 14 feels as brittle as Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Skeleton”. However, like the repeated use of numbers through the album, it feels as though it is more meant to add to the confusion and second guessing feeling of ‘is that it, or what does it mean? Is it just songs from the road in the midst of the ennui?’ Either way, while it can, in an infinitely small moment, sound familiar, it is no other sound and style than themselves.
Throughout, the songs feel as though they struggle to resolve. Something is always at odds with itself. The vulnerability of 14 feels like it should be the life affirming end, but much like Brazil could not end with love, Everyone’s Crushed reminds us that, in the end, please Buy My Product. That’s why we make this, right?
One has to wonder, if this is the feeling of it all. If this is what touring, life on the road, and becoming a musician is today, why do it? We hold onto a fighting hope of beauty.
4.5/5
Everyone’s Crushed is out May 26th on streaming services with physical copies available for order here.
